Serbia’s commissioner can’t get access to information

The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection has been denied access to unspecified classified information necessary for his work, his office said on Monday.

The statement from Rodoljub Sabic’s office said that a procedure of issuing him a security clearance which was declared a “state secret”, has been dragging on, preventing him from observing his duties.

Sabic said that the procedure has violated all articles of the Law on Data Secrecy and that he had written to Serbia’s Security Informative Agency (BIA) chief demanding an immediate explanation for the procedure stalling.

“Such acting is even more difficult to understand since the commissioner is among a very few people who passed the strictest security control twice last year,” the statement said.

Serbia’s parliament has elected Sabic for the post for three consecutive terms so far and his last mandate expires this year.

Speaking to N1 television in January, Sabic said that the situation with the personal data protection in Serbia was worrying and that in order to change that the state had to change its stand.

Investigative journalists and citizens in Serbia often turn to Sabic for information otherwise unavailable to them.